


The quiet dream

by laughingpineapple



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games)
Genre: Dreams, Dreamsharing, Gen, Lordran Being Lordran, Other, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-24 18:01:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20911805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: From burning mass to the knight-errant fair.





	The quiet dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alana/gifts).

'Tis a known fact within the walls of Lordran that Solaire dreams of the sun. Adventurer, you may have heard the tale yourself, from the knight's own lips or from the many echoes he has left, memories and bonds of friendship from the depths of Izalith to Anor Londo's walls.

A better-kept secret is the fact that the sun, too, dreams of Solaire. Age and weariness creep on its rays and its flame has been locked away for an age now. It cannot burn. What is left of the sun is an artificial echo imprisoned in the sky, fixed and unable to go out. What is left of the sun is a small mercy: a prisoner can still dream. Such are the dreams of celestial bodies: the sun descends within itself to the depths of its abandoned furnaces of star-matter, old cathedrals to a flame long gone, cold and rusted, tall arches shaking with low vibrations from the dark depths of space. There, it collects what is left of its rays and casts them toward a kind and worthy man. On a good day, the sun's embrace may catch him down the furthest reaches of Blighttown, where despair runs deep, and with ardent fingers raise his chin from treacherous cursed soil to the secret glimpse of fair skies above, beyond the branches of the archtrees. The discovery would fill Solaire with a private joy, he would laugh and praise that blessing; the sun would hold his hand and weep with the same bliss.

As they kept walking side by side, and in so holding him with such tenderness, the sun itself would feel the thrill of brandishing a sword and of having legs and feet with which to wander far, and it would linger in this human form, in these human thoughts. As a sage of Oolacile once said when the world was younger:_ in dreams, are all characters really you? _ A duplicity is already present in this picture: the sun as burning orb, far up in the sky, and as active presence down in Lordran, warming the tired knight. It accepts the ambiguity (and comes closer, in that moment, to understanding the mystery of its own existence, but that is another story for another time). In letting Solaire rest against its burning shoulders, in propping him up again and aiding his footsteps, the sun basks in what it would be like to be him: a flame burning courteous, free, loud, splendid, devoted, doomed. In the manner of dreams it _is_ him: lover, kin and self at once. Theirs is a radiant union.

It is also known that the tales of Lordran are hardly fair. In the end, the sun, like the knight Solaire, can only dream. They shine with the same brightness, a frequency for them alone, yet even when their light refracts and multiplies superimposed, a barrier remains between them, made of crude sense and matter. They wake, and do not know any better.

May they yet meet in darkness, and in freedom, past the turning of their age.


End file.
